I wasn’t waiting at the window so that I could watch for them. It just happened to be a nice day to sit at the window and read. Purrloin curled on my lap, purring. She was transitioning remarkably well to these new surroundings. Better than me. I missed my home. Things being where I’d put them. Things I’d chosen to surround myself with. They were all just things, of course. But they were my things. I missed them.

This was my first time being alone in the house. Before I settled down at the window, I roamed the halls and rooms, trailing my finger along dusty shelves, looking for signs of Rev’s childhood. There weren’t many; the house was decorated in a hodgepodge of styles, as though, like my adopted wardrobe, twenty different people had contributed to the final effect. And none of those people seemed to have been particularly attached to the Daly brothers, because there were almost no childhood knickknacks or pictures or photos or anything.

My father’s house was a shrine to my younger years. It was cute and annoying at the same time. He kept all my crayon drawings, the walls were littered with school photos, every clay ashtray and poorly-sewn finger puppet stored in some corner or another. He even kept the fairy house we built in a hole in an old tree.

That was something I never stopped appreciating though; I could have done without the finger-painted butterflies, but the fairy house was my favorite. A pizza-box triangle was the table. Thimbles made chairs around it. A tiny cow sat beside the table, and a miniature bear twice the size of the cow stood overlooking the scene. My father and I collected dozens of tiny things and spent hours planning it out, discarding objects after serious discussions about their efficacy in attracting fairies. When he came home with the tea set - no bigger than his pinkie, I literally screamed.

And through season after season, year after year, those little totems stayed nestled in the safety of the tree. My father created a squirrel barrier out of chicken wire and a latch. For all I knew, it was still there.

I guess boys wouldn’t have such tender or charming childhood mementos to display. But there should have been something. A low, hollow sadness filled my heart when I thought about it, so eventually I stopped looking and settled down to not-wait.

Nothing had changed since Rev and I acted on our baser instincts, three days before.

Except, perhaps, the stress between us had evaporated. We were nowhere near being out of the woods, but we might as well have stopped to pick berries and frolic with the little woodland critters.

Three days of crazy, non-stop sex will do that to you. Every time I thought for sure that I’d driven him into a post-sex coma, he rolled me over and proved me wrong. He’d grab my wrists, hold me down, and lick me into a fever until he was ready for round two… or three…

There wasn’t a room in the two-story house that went untouched by our parade of orgasms. He’d taken me in the shower, bent over the kitchen sink, in every bed. Even the living room wasn’t safe. Trick took a ride down to the gas station for cigarettes and Rev has me pushed up against the bookshelf before he’d even started his bike. He lifted me up against his chest and fucked me until the books came raining down on us.

Trick didn’t seem to care that his brother was hosting a non-stop sexfest in their childhood hideout. He certainly wasn’t pining for any quality time with Rev. They barely spoke. Trick was going through the worst of his withdrawals, spending most of his time hiding up in his room. I normally would have felt self-conscious about the whole thing, but I was too damn loved-up to care.

I’d never been crazy for a man, period. Rev made me feel like I should be committed. He couldn’t walk past me, smelling like he did, without my body heating up. He’d come up behind me, lift his hands like birds, and let his fingers barely graze my neck. Seconds later, I’d be kissing him like the first time and last time, wrapping my legs around his waist and pushing him onto the bed.

We were having sex like it was our last days on Earth…

That morning, before he left, it had been different.

Rolling over, I’d found him at my side, as usual. But he was awake, and it seemed like he had been for some time. He was leaning up on an elbow, looking down at me. I licked my lips, blinked my way into the morning, and hummed.

“What?” I asked, rolling closer, trying to melt into his heat. “What’re you looking at?”

“The light,” he said. “From the window.”

Confused, I looked over my shoulder. Yup. There was a window, alright. And there was light, too. It all checked out. I turned back to him, one eyebrow raised.

“Nothing,” he grinned. “It just looked pretty on you.”

Something in my chest winced, folded, and felt like it was melting. I bit my lip, torn between wanting to keep the moment like it was, pure and sweet and simple, and ending it. Because pure and sweet and simple as it was, it was also uncomfortable. It was one thing to fuck like animals. It was another thing entirely to like each other while we did it. I didn’t need the complication of liking Rev.

Just trusting him was enough of a struggle.

“C’mon,” I’d finally said, adding a fake giggle. “Don’t.”

It was all I needed to say. He knew.

“Okay,” he said, and promptly rolled over on top of me, spreading my naked thighs with his knees. “I won’t.”

He entered me quickly, groaning, swallowing my gasp with his lips. Everything burned beautifully. I lifted my hips for him. Took him deeper. Closed my eyes. Let him take me, asked him to, begged him to. Ignored the little piece of my heart that couldn’t stop thinking of his eyes when he looked at me in the light. That told me I couldn’t stop it, no matter how hard I tried.

I was going to end up loving this man, whether I wanted to or not.

And love, my daddy used to tell me, was the kind of thing that ended up getting people killed.